The Intellectualism of Stupidity Pt 4

 

As the shrouds of mystery surrounding the ruins of Egypt are slowly inched back allowing us to peer into its dim darkened halls, the shards of pottery, fragments of papyrus, and the walls of hieroglyphs remind us who seek her clues that the Egyptians were indeed human beings. They too were susceptible to the patterns of human complacency and decadence that were so starkly apparent in the civilizations they would precede. They too would build a civilization based upon the foundation of their marriage construct, yes, Egyptians were marrying long before Christians were, focused upon the generation, preservation, and cultivation of human life.

When the allure of personal pleasure and gratification caused them to abandon and compromise their foundational construct, they faced their own decline as a repercussion. The repetitive rise and fall of the Egyptian Dynasties heralded an ominous warning for civilization to come. Abandon your foundation at your own peril for if you do all that you have built upon it will crumble into the sands of time.

The patterns exist. They are etched in time. The evidence lies before us stark and cold and who could ignore it.

But we can and we do. We of all peoples of the earth and time are without excuse with so much evidence and information before us. Mountains of knowledge we eschew in order to embrace the same patterns of collapse the have plagued past civilizations. We stumble drunkenly towards our doom heedless to the calls of Egyptian leaders who decried the collapse of the family structure predicating the falls of the Egyptian Dynasties chronicled for our warning on sacred relics in hallowed tombs or the Roman Emperor who in a decree of desperation tried to protect the Heterosexual Marriage Construct by law to save a crumbling Empire, but too late as the seeds of licentious, decadent, and immoral behavior were rooted too deep in the social fabric to bring Rome back.

Through the fog of the stupor we now find ourselves, are we so debased that we cannot perceive the evidence before us that shouts through time that marriage is not about sexual preference and personal pleasure but it is about the preservation of life? It is necessary to the security of a nation and therefore must be protected as Rome learned too late. Without life there can be no living.

The modern man mocks this truth, even in anger. Our political parties scheme and work to remove those who defend these “antiquated” ideas of life from public expression. So bent on popular appeasement they forget that fact and truth are rarely popular but necessary to stability.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this in his letter on stupidity. Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

As Bonhoeffer watched Germany crumble, we would do well to heed his warning to the results of our craven stupor. We cling, we crave, we claw in a blind belief that we are the civilization that can transcend the laws of human descent. As we demand to avail ourselves to the opportunity to repeat the disastrous mistakes of past civilizations, we would do well to ask ourselves: Is not that the very definition of insanity?

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